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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145103">Still Rocking Your Hoodie</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p'>merle_p</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5 Times, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Sharing Clothes, Snapshots</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:44:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,618</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27145103</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Booker shared his clothes with Andy, and one time she (sort of) shared hers with him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Booker | Sebastien le Livre</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>102</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Fic In A Box</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Still Rocking Your Hoodie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/HogwartsToAlexandria/gifts">HogwartsToAlexandria</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I've been meaning to write something for this ship since the movie came out and your letter gave me all the inspiration I needed - thank you for giving me a chance to explore their relationship a little bit more! I hope you like this :)</p><p>The title is a line from the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNtIvGrqAZE">Hoodie</a> by Hey Violet:<br/>"I'm still rocking your hoodie, / And chewing on the strings / It makes me think about you / So I wear it when I sleep<br/>I kept the broken zipper / And cigarette burns / Still rocking your hoodie / Baby, even though it hurts / Still rocking your ..."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>1 - Marseille (France), November 1813</strong>
</p><p>The woman is huddling in the entryway of a storefront, barely visible in the flickering light of the lonely streetlamp further down the way.</p><p>Sebastien almost doesn’t notice her. By the time his brain registers what he’s seeing from the corner of his eye, he has already walked past her, and even as he stops and carefully looks back over his shoulder, he isn’t entirely sure whether his mind isn’t just playing a trick on him.</p><p>It gets dark early this time of year, a thick fog is creeping up into the city from the sea, and the deep shadows in the narrow streets near the harbor are only sparsely illuminated by the faint glow of the lanterns.</p><p>To Sebastian, the gloomy weather on the brink of winter feels like a reflection of his own conflicted thoughts. Part of his mind is still preoccupied with the half-finished commission he reluctantly left behind for the night at the small print shop in the 2<sup>nd</sup> Arrondissement where he has been working for the past six months. The other half is gearing up for the nightly reunion with his family, something that used to be the highlight of his day but has become a much more complicated ritual. He looks forward to seeing them, can’t wait to hug his wife and kiss his sons goodnight – and yet, even as he wants so much to be himself around them, coming home also means, inevitably, putting walls up around himself, because none of them can ever find out what happened to him, find out that he is not who he once was.</p><p>No one at home, no one in Marseille understands that Sebastien le Livre was never meant to return from war. No one knows that he died on the gallows at the hand of his own compatriots, because everyone who was there to witness what happened is dead. The other deserters, hanged side-by-side with him; his fellow soldiers, slit open by Russian bayonets; his officers, frozen to death on their horses in the merciless cold of the Russian winter – all of them are dead, sacrificed for the doomed grandiose ambitions of one man in search of glory, while Sebastien made his way home, a rare survivor in the most unlikely sense of the word.</p><p>So when he catches a glimpse of the strange woman sitting on the stairs in front of the shuttered bakery, his first thought is that she might be merely a ghost, a memory, a figment of his imagination. But once he looks more closely, it becomes clear that she is real, and he quickly walks back the few steps to the store, stopping at the foot of the staircase.</p><p>“Madame,” he says. “Are you alright?” She flinches a little in reaction to his words but doesn’t answer, and he bends down towards her, concerned.</p><p>Even in the dim light of the streetlamp, he can see that she is quite beautiful, her features sharp and somehow delicate at the same time. She must be close to him in age – not exactly young, but certainly not old either. More importantly for the moment, she is also dripping wet, and shivering in her simple dark dress; her long hair is a mess, hanging in heavy strands down to her shoulders and into her face.</p><p>“When happened to you?” he asks, appalled. “Did you go overboard somewhere? Do you need help?”</p><p>Hesitantly, she looks up at him and opens her mouth as if to answer, but her teeth are chattering too much for her to get out any words.</p><p>“<em>Nom de dieu</em>,” he curses under his breath. He only hesitates briefly before he unbuttons his heavy coat and slides it off his shoulders. Immediately, the clammy fog starts to sneak into his clothes, and he grits his teeth against the cold as he kneels down next to her on the stairs.</p><p>“Here,” he says, draping the woolen coat carefully around the woman’s shoulders. She pulls the coat around herself tightly, curling up into its warmth, and Sebastien puts a comforting hand against her spine, rubbing her back through the heavy fabric.</p><p>“I’m Sebastien LeLivre,” he says when the shivering subsides and her breathing deepens. He pulls back his hand and tilts his head to look her in the face.</p><p>“Feeling better?” he asks, and she glances up at him with a sudden, strangely calculating smile.</p><p>“Much better,” she says lightly, and in one smooth motion she pulls a knife from the folds of her skirt and stabs him in the thigh.</p><p>“<em>Putain de merde</em>,” he swears, doubling over in pain, because the knowledge that the wound will close within seconds doesn’t make the injury hurt any less.</p><p>She watches him struggle with a sort of detached curiosity. “I know who you are,” she says dryly. “I’m Andromache. Pleasure to meet you.”</p><p>Sebastien hurls insults at her, in French and in Russian, hisses through clenched teeth as he yanks the blade out of his leg, and tells himself that no matter how long he is going to live, this is the last time he is going to play good Samaritan and share his clothes with a woman who isn’t his wife.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>2 - London (England), April 1850</strong>
</p><p>“What do you think?” Andy asks, striking a pose that looks casual but is in fact carefully calculated: her stance wide, the hand holding a cigarette dangling loosely at her side, the fingers of the other resting against the brim of her cap as if she is about to greet a passerby in the street.</p><p>Nicky frowns up at her over the maps of the city he has spread out on the kitchen table. “You look good, Boss,” he says, encouragingly and a little distractedly, before his attention drifts back to the corner of Pennington Street and Wapping Lane.</p><p>Andromache sighs, a sound of fond resignation, and rolls her eyes at the top of his head.</p><p>“Sebastien,” she says, “maybe you have a more qualified opinion. How do I look?”</p><p>Booker leans back against the kitchen cabinets and takes a deep drag on his own cigarette as he contemplates her appearance: the flat hat, a simple linen shirt combined with a dark-gray vest, well-worn black trousers and sturdy boots that have certainly seen better days.</p><p>He pulls a face.</p><p>“Like a very pretty boy,” he says honestly, and she groans, although the frustration is not directed at him.</p><p>“That’s what I was worried about,” she says. “Yeah, that’s not good enough. I’m trying to convince them to hire me for construction work on the docks. I don’t want them to proposition me on their lunchbreak.”</p><p>“Hmm,” Booker nods thoughtfully, knowing better than to suggest that he could go and take care of the job in her stead. It’s not so much that the accent he still hasn’t been able to fully shake off might raise questions – rather, he knows that this particular infiltration will likely require the cold, ruthless kind of deadly destruction only Andy and Nicky are really capable of. And since Nicky's skills as a sniper will be required as back-up for Joe in a different location, and Andy easily outdoes all of them in close-range combat, Andy is the one who needs to go.</p><p>The constellation makes him wonder, once again, about his own place on the team. He has operated in the moral grey zone outside the framework of the law more than once before his death, but he was never a warrior, never wanted to be a soldier either: his preferred weapons were forged documents, access to the right information, the skill of working with movable type, not pistols or axes, shotguns or swords.</p><p>Right now, though, Andy is asking for his opinion, so he sets his cigarette down on the empty plate next to Nicky’s elbow and crosses his arms in front of his chest as he recalls his encounters with some of the women who frequented his underground press during the Revolution, those who had perfected the art of blending in among the men.</p><p>“Try this,” he finally says. He pushes himself away from the counter, stepping towards her until he is close enough to lift the flat cap off her head. Her short-cropped hair stands up in all directions, and his hand twitches with the sudden urge to reach out and comb gentle fingers through the messy spikes.</p><p>Instead, he picks up his own bowler hat from the kitchen counter and carefully places it on her head, pulling it down a little into her forehead and shifting it slightly to the right.</p><p>“Better?” Andy asks, and he tilts his head for a critical look. Where the flat cap had made her seem younger, had highlighted the boyishness of her appearance, the bowler hat makes her look more mature, and the brim casts a shadow over her face, partly obscuring her eyes.  </p><p>“Better,” he nods. “Not perfect.”</p><p>On the table, his forgotten cigarette has burned down in the meantime, and even though he feels a tiny twinge of regret at the waste of perfectly good tobacco, he ignores the sad remainders of the cigarette in favor of the small pile of ash that has formed on the plate. He drags two fingers through the ash, then reaches for Andy’s chin with his other hand, holding her face steady while he traces her jaw with his fingertips. Andy’s eyes are tracking him carefully, but she lets him work without complaint, still as a statue underneath his hands until he releases her at last.</p><p>By now, his cigarette is officially dead, but Andy looks like she has got three days’ worth of stubble, and the fact that she smells like a crowded dance hall at two in the morning certainly doesn’t hurt.</p><p>“There,” he says, satisfied. “This should do it.”</p><p>He plucks her cigarette from between her fingers and brings it to his mouth.</p><p>“Well,” he adds, though the haze of smoke between them. “If it starts raining, you are out of luck.”</p><p>Andy shrugs, unfazed. “I’ll just have to kill them faster then.”</p><p>“Sure,” Booker says dryly. “That’ll work.”</p><p>Unexpectedly, she leans in as if to kiss his temple, but he dodges her at the last moment, holding his hand up between them to keep her away.</p><p>“Don’t ruin my hard work before you even leave the house,” he says, a little awkwardly, and she laughs goodnaturedly and pats his cheek instead.</p><p>“Thanks, Booker,” she says. “What would we be doing without you?”</p><p>He shrugs, embarrassed, but before he can come up with a response, he is saved by a small sound of surprise: Nicky has abandoned his maps again and is looking up at them from narrow eyes.</p><p>“That’s very good,” he says, genuinely impressed, and then he smiles, a sharp, dangerous little thing.</p><p>“Those guys won’t know what hit them.”</p><p>“That’s the plan,” Andy smirks, and steals her cigarette back from Booker’s hand.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>3 - Santiago (Cuba), July 1898</strong>
</p><p>“Come on already, for fuck’s sake,” Booker swears, hoisting Andy’s body another step up the slope, trying his best to ignore the trail of blood they are leaving behind on the grass.</p><p>It’s just the two of them now: He lost Joe and Nicky a while ago somewhere in the chaos behind them, and he prays that they will be able to make their way back to camp on their own, because there is no way he can turn around and search for them, not with Andy still being a literal dead weight in his arms and the angry beat of the Gatling guns following them up the hill.</p><p>The Spanish are fighting a doomed war in Cuba – they lost the chance at securing their dominance in the country when the United States decided to throw their hat in the ring. The Spanish military is bound to lose Santiago to the U.S. Army any day, but Booker couldn’t care less about Spanish interests, doesn’t care about the Americans either, despite their strategic support of Cuban independence: He has seen this kind of conflict play out far too many times over the past century to be willing to root for either side.  </p><p>The only reason they are here is to sneak civilian families out of the besieged city – those who didn’t make it out during the brief ceasefire or wanted to stay and have since changed their minds. They managed to bring two groups to safety and were just returning to rescue more when the Americans rolled out the Gatling guns and all hell broke loose. Joe had his leg torn to shreds right before Andy got hit in the chest, both the sort of fatal injuries that they couldn’t possibly wait for to heal in the middle of a battlefield without drawing the kind of attention they really don’t need - especially now that war photographers have become an inescapable, inconvenient part of seemingly every major military conflict, always lying in wait to document for posterity what Booker and his friends are trying so carefully to hide.</p><p>So instead of waiting patiently for Joe and Andy to get up on their own, Booker and Nicky focused on dragging the two of them out of the range of gunfire and trampling boots without themselves getting hit by the bullets. At least Joe was alive for all of it, even if the pain of a regrowing leg meant that he was barely lucid and quietly sobbing into Nicky’s neck. Andy, on the other hand, has been out for what to Booker feels like an eternity, and he doesn’t dare pause for even a second and take a closer look at her because he is too terrified of what he might find.</p><p>In fact, he is so busy fighting off the panic threatening to steal his breath that he almost drops her in shock when Andy finally gasps, an awful, gurgling sound right next to his ear.</p><p>“Oh God, thank God,” he breathes, almost lightheaded with relief. He shifts her convulsing body in his arms and gently lowers her to the ground in the shade of an ancient ceiba tree, falling to his knees at her side.</p><p>“Here you go, it’s all good, come here,” he rambles as he maneuvers her body until her back is propped up by the enormous roots. She sags against the tree and groans, her eyes reflecting the inevitable disorientation that tends to accompany the moment of resurrection before reality fully sets in.</p><p>“Holy fuck,” she stutters, her words garbled, distorted by what seems to be blood in her mouth. He fumbles for the bottle that he carries on a strap over his shoulder and gently presses the open container against her lips. With effort, she slurps up some of the water, then turns her head to the side and spits before she looks back up at him, silently asking for more.</p><p>This time she drinks, in long, greedy gulps, and when she signals wordlessly that she is done, he pulls his handkerchief from the pocket of his uniform jacket and uses some of the remaining water to wipe her face.</p><p>“Shit, that one hurt,” she says, her hands coming up to feel her chest, where the lethal injuries must have knitted themselves back together by now without a trace. With two pointed fingers, she pulls a bullet out of her cleavage and studies it with intense disgust.  </p><p>“Fucking Gatling guns,” she says and throws the bullet far into the field. “What happened to good old bow and arrow.”</p><p>Booker grimaces. “Modern warfare,” he says dryly, and rinses the handkerchief with the rest of his water before he stows it away.</p><p>“Fuck modernity,” she retorts and lets her head fall back against the roots of the tree.</p><p>He snorts, darkly amused, but she shakes her head and reaches out to wrap a hand around his forearm with strangely desperate urgency.  </p><p>“I mean it,” she says seriously. “I thought technology was supposed to make our lives better. Instead, they keep coming up with better ways to kill each other. As if that isn’t something humanity already excels at without additional help. Is the 20<sup>th</sup> century just going to be more of this shit?”</p><p>He shrugs and doesn't answer, because this isn’t a conversation he is ready to have, certainly not when his stomach is still queasy from the terror of dragging Andy’s lifeless body across the battlefield.</p><p>“I told Nicky we’d meet them back at the camp,” he says instead, avoiding her gaze. “We should move soon, we are too exposed here. Think you can make it?”</p><p>“Ready when you are,” she confirms and sits up straight. “Once we find Joe and Nicky, we’ll have to head back into the city,” she adds. “We can still get some people out.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Booker says flatly, swallowing the sense of dread rising in his chest at the idea of going back the way they came, and not for the first time he feels both envy and horror in the face of Andy's ability to shake off the pain, the terror so easily.</p><p>“We’ll have to do something about your shirt though,” he says. “It’s a mess, you’ll scare the kids.”</p><p>“Urgh,” she makes, looking down at the tattered, bloody remainders of her guayabera and the equally ruined brassiere that is visible through the large tears in the fabric of her shirt. “Can I borrow yours?”</p><p>“My shirt?” he frowns, distracted by the movement of her fingers as they make quick work of the buttons that have survived her encounter with the Gatling gun.</p><p>She nods, a little impatiently, gestures for him to hurry, and by the time he has shed his stolen army jacket and the plain white shirt he is wearing underneath, she has discarded the ruined guayabera and is in the process of sliding out of her brassiere, which is clearly as far beyond saving as the shirt.</p><p>He catches himself staring, quickly looks away, then feels ridiculous when he remembers that she doesn’t care, and when he finally works up the courage to look up again, she is naked from the waist up and studying him with eyes that are just the tiniest bit too observant for his taste.</p><p>He half-expects a chastising remark, a pitying commentary, but she merely holds out her hand, wordlessly.</p><p>“Shirt,” she says, and he hands it over, then shrugs back into his uniform jacket and starts to fix the buttons with clumsy, trembling hands. The heavy material chafes against the bare skin of his torso, but it is better than going without - he feels vulnerable enough as it is.</p><p>She is done before he is, jumping to her feet and offering him a hand up as soon as he slips the last button into its hole. The shirt is too big on her, but not by much, and apart from the tiny spatters of dirt and dried blood on her neck, no one would look at her and guess that she died from a bullet to the heart not even a half hour ago.</p><p>“Come,” she says, and points her chin uphill, in the direction of their camp. “Let’s go rescue some children.”</p><p>“Yes,” he says hoarsely, and doesn’t look back at her ripped, blood-soaked shirt, discarded carelessly at the foot of the tree.</p><p>“Yes, let’s.”</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>4 - Central Highlands (Kenya), February 1945</strong>
</p><p>He wakes up to an empty bed and the sound of a gunshot that prompts him to fumble for his own pistol with half-open eyes.</p><p>He strains to listen into the night, but there is only the continuous flapping noise of the ceiling fan: no shouting, no gunfire, no crackling flames, nothing that would point towards an actual imminent threat.</p><p>A look at his watch on the nightstand tells him that it’s four in the morning. He takes a deep breath, wills his heartrate to slow down, and takes stock of his surroundings - the empty tea cups, the rumpled sheets, the spot underneath his left thigh that is stiff with the dried evidence of his release, suggesting that the blurry memories in his head are not merely the afterimages of a particularly vivid dream.</p><p>He pushes the sheets back and climbs out of bed, stark naked. In the darkness, he casts about for his clothes, tries to remember when and where he took off his undershorts, but the only thing his search turns up is Andy’s linen dress, crumpled up in a heap at the foot of the bed.</p><p>He holds the dress between his hands, remembers the way she had looked wearing it the night before, sprawling comfortably in a kitchen chair, with one leg folded up against her chest, the other one stretched out in front of her.</p><p>Joe and Nicky had retreated early, wrapped around each other in that way they had sometimes, seemingly unaware of anything and anyone in their environment. Booker and Andy had watched them leave and lingered in the kitchen, drinking tea, smoking, discussing Kenyan politics and the difference between camembert and brie, and Booker wouldn’t have been able to say whether Andy was just humoring him or whether she was as reluctant as he was to go to bed on her own.</p><p>“You want to fuck?” she asked at last when the hands of the clock had inched past midnight, and he stared at her, cup raised halfway to his mouth.</p><p>“Now?” he responded, inanely, and she snorted and leaned back in her chair, the outline of her breasts clearly visible underneath the light fabric of her dress.</p><p>“We can make an appointment for next week,” she smiled, amused, “but we may be on the run from the Brits by then.”</p><p>“I’m not going to let the British control my sex life,” he said before he could change his mind.</p><p>“That’s what I thought,” she nodded and got up to sit in his lap. </p><p>Now, alone in the dark bedroom, he drops the dress back on the bed, gives up on the underwear, and instead slips into his wrinkled khakis before he makes his way to the front of the house, his pistol tucked into the back of his waistband.</p><p>He finds Andy on the front porch, staring out into the night, hunting rifle in one hand, a glass of bourbon in the other.</p><p>She’s wearing nothing but a white undershirt and a pair of men’s shorts, and when he steps up to her from behind, he realizes that the reason he couldn’t find his shorts is that the ones she is wearing are his own. His heart gives a little twinge at the sight, somewhere between resurging desire and wistful longing, but he doesn’t get much time to dwell on it, because she turns around before he can announce his presence and raises her glass in a kind of toast.</p><p>“I heard the shots,” Booker says and steps up next to her, keeping a foot of distance between them, suddenly uncertain of his place at her side. </p><p>“Lions,” she explains. “Getting a little too close to the house.”</p><p>He raises his brows. “You killed one?”</p><p>“Of course not,” she says, a little put out. “Just told them to mind their own business. Not interested in getting mauled by a big cat tonight.”</p><p>“Ever been killed by a lion?” he asks, and thinks it says a lot about their lives that this kind of question qualifies as perfectly reasonable pillow talk.</p><p>She finishes off her drink, taking the time to mull it over.</p><p>“Surprisingly no,” she finally says. “Did get my arm bitten off by an alligator once.” She pulls a face. “I don’t recommend it.”</p><p>He snorts. “I’ll keep it in mind.”</p><p>They fall quiet, then, looking out into the fields together, side by side. After a moment, she takes a step to the right, tilting her head to lean it against his shoulder, and he feels something deep inside of him uncoil. He slings an arm around her, his hand coming to rest lightly on her hip, his fingers molding themselves around the curve of her hipbone, the fabric of his shorts a strangely familiar sensation against his palm.</p><p>“Let’s go back to bed,” Andy finally says. “It’s still more than two hours until sunrise.”</p><p>“Are you going to be able to sleep?” he asks, and she looks at him with her brows raised.</p><p>“I thought I could ride you again,” she says, “unless you are too tired, of course.”</p><p>“Not anymore, I’m not,” he says quickly, and she smiles, then steps away and leads the way back into the house, her gait as graceful as that of a lioness on the prowl.</p><p>Booker follows her, a little more slowly, and thinks that it’s entirely possible that he’ll have his heart ripped out of his chest tonight after all – and unlike an attack by a lion, this one may be an injury he won’t be able to recover from any time soon.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>5 - Maui (Hawaii), October 2017 </strong>
</p><p>“What’s going on in your head, Sebastien?” she asks, propping her head up on her hand. The straw beach mat has left an imprint on her left arm, and there is a bit of wet sand still sticking to her shoulder. Booker aches to reach out and brush it off, but in the end he keeps his hands to himself.</p><p>“Are you sure you are going to be okay?” he asks, his voice rough, and she sighs fondly.</p><p>“You know I’ll be fine, Book,” she says and runs a sun-warm hand from his knee down his shin to the top of his foot. “Takes more to kill me than a backpacking trip through Scandinavia.”</p><p>Booker frowns. “Is that what you are going to do?”</p><p>“Who knows?” She shrugs. “It doesn’t really matter. I just need a little break from – ”</p><p>“From us?” he asks, aiming for joking and missing by a mile.</p><p>She shakes her head, apologetically, a little wearily. “I’m just tired, Book,” she says.</p><p>Tired of what? he wants to ask. Tired of Joe and Nicky’s happiness? Tired of my misery?  But he knows he is not going to get an answer from her, and even if he did, he isn’t so sure that it would make him feel better in any way.</p><p>Something must show in his face though, because she wraps a hand around his ankle and squeezes, gently.</p><p>“Ask Joe and Nicky,” she says. “They’ll tell you about the last time I took time off from the team.” She smiles. “They will also remind you that I’ll always come back for you. To you. You know that.”</p><p>“Just promise me you’ll be careful,” he pleads and focuses on the circles her fingertips are tracing around his ankle bone so he doesn’t need to think about the dark hole opening up in the middle of his chest.</p><p>“Don’t worry about me,” she says and pushes herself up to a cross-legged seat, her hand slipping off his foot and coming to rest in her lap.</p><p>“Are <em>you </em>going to be okay?”</p><p>He looks away. “As okay as I’ll ever be,” he says, his voice jumping slightly over the lump in his throat.</p><p>“Oh Booker,” she sighs, her voice too knowing and too compassionate. She reaches out with thumb and index finger and carefully plucks the sunglasses off his nose.</p><p>Without the barrier of tinted glass between them, he can see clearly the sadness, the weariness in her eyes. She looks at him for a long moment, then leans in to kiss him on the mouth – lightly, sweetly –, and he can’t tell if it’s meant to be an apology or a goodbye.</p><p>Eventually, she climbs to her feet and holds the sunglasses out to him.</p><p>He squints up at her, narrowing his eyes against the bright sunlight as much as against the radiant glow of her bare skin.</p><p>“You keep them,” he says. “They look better on you anyway.”</p><p>She inclines her head in acknowledgment and slides the glasses over her eyes.</p><p>“I’ll bring you back a souvenir,” she says, her expression unreadable now that the shades are hiding her eyes from view.</p><p>“Looking forward to it,” he says hoarsely, and his gaze follows her as she walks away from him and down the beach, along the shoreline, just close enough by the water that the waves can lap softly at her bare feet.</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>+1 - Brest (France), March 2019 </strong>
</p><p>He is soaked, wet to the bones, and shivering, always shivering. It feels like he has been trembling for hours, days, months, and he can’t even tell anymore whether right now he is shaking from the adrenaline crash or the cold.</p><p>His takes a deep breath, struggling to suck in the air, and even though he knows, rationally, that his lungs are working perfectly fine, have long recovered from whatever damage they sustained along the way, he can’t quite shake off the sense of pressure, the panic, the terror he felt when Quynh was drowning him, then drowning him again. </p><p>“How are you?” Joe asks from behind him, and a hand settles on his shoulder, firm and warm.</p><p>He turns his head to glance up at Joe, manages a shaky smile.</p><p>“I’m alright,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else – there is so much they will need to talk about and yet there’s nothing that urgently needs to be said.</p><p>“Hm,” Joe makes, a little skeptically, but he doesn’t push for more. His fingers squeeze Booker’s shoulder through his soaked sweater, then slide over the same spot in a kind of fleeting caress – one more sign that Booker is forgiven, and he files that moment away carefully with the others to look at more closely later, when he has the energy to actually appreciate it.</p><p>Then the hand drops away and Joe walks past him to the helm of the boat, where Nicky and Nile appear to be arguing over the controls.</p><p>Booker watches him wrap an arm around Nicky from behind, watches Nicky lean down to kiss him, watches Nile seize the opportunity and take possession of the steering wheel while Nicky is distracted thoroughly.</p><p>He feels a surge of helpless fondness and gratitude well up inside him, almost enough to distract him from the cold and the pressure on his chest for a second or two.</p><p>Andy chooses that moment to sit down next to him on the bench in the stern, close enough for their elbows to touch when she moves to unzip her sweater.</p><p>“Here,” she says and drapes the open sweater over his shoulders, then wraps her arm around his back like an extra layer of warmth.</p><p>He closes his eyes with a sigh and permits himself to lean into her embrace. A distant memory flickers up before his inner eye, and he finds himself smiling faintly, despite himself.</p><p>“What’s so funny?” Andy asks, curiously, and he opens his eyes again to take in her expression, at once mildly concerned and fondly amused.</p><p>“Reminds me of the first time we met,” he says, a little hoarsely. For a moment, she stares at him uncomprehendingly, but then the confusion clears and she laughs out loud, surprised.</p><p>“Do you know that I had Joe push me off the harbor wall to make it more convincing?” she asks. “Then you ended up working late that night and I had to sit around in the cold for an hour, dripping wet.”</p><p>He sniffs. “I gave you my coat, and you stabbed me.”</p><p>She smiles. “Well, I’m making it up to you now, aren’t I?”</p><p>He feigns a doubtful grimace, just to make her laugh again, and doesn’t ruin the moment by reminding her that if either of them has any making up to do, it’s going to be him. Instead, he pulls the sweater a little more tightly around himself, relishes being wrapped up in dry warmth and Andy’s smell.</p><p>Then he pauses, frowns, and lifts one of the empty sleeves closer to his face.</p><p>“Is this my sweater?” he asks, puzzled, his thumb running over the material, taking in the familiar texture, the distinctive pattern.</p><p>“No,” Andy says lightly. “It’s my sweater. That I’m lending to you.”</p><p>“No, no,” Booker shakes his head. “This is absolutely my sweater. I brought it to Paris with me after Sudan. When I went back to the Charlie safehouse after I returned from London, I couldn’t find it. I figured it might have gotten lost in the raid.”</p><p>He stares at her. “You took my sweater.”</p><p>She has the grace to look a tiny bit embarrassed, although there’s a hint of gleeful mischief lurking underneath.</p><p>“It’s a nice sweater,” she says eventually, not quite an apology.</p><p>“I know,” he answers, trying his best to act put out and failing miserably. “It’s my sweater.”</p><p>“What can I say,” she shrugs. “I didn’t know if you’d come back for your things. I didn’t want it to get lost.”</p><p>He looks at her from the side. “I hope it kept you warm this winter,” he says, and it’s meant to sound teasing but comes out a little more serious than planned.</p><p>She stares at him for a long moment. “Not warm enough,” she replies, and that, too, sounds like she intended it to be a joke that she isn't quite able to pull off.</p><p>“I’m so sorry,” he says. He isn’t really talking about the sweater anymore, and they both know it, but for the moment, it’s easier for both of them to pretend.</p><p>“Well, you can have it back now,” she answers, and presses her shoulder against his.</p><p>“Now that you are home, I don’t really need it anymore.”</p>
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